A Man Of Many Regrets
by fascimility
Summary: Hakkai thinks of the things that could have been.


Disclaimer: Minekura-sama owns all.

Notes: 45 minutes, longhand, thought I think I may have overshot. " Hakkai thinks of the things that could have been.For tm challenge: Perfection. Comments and criticism welcome.

_**A Man of Many Regrets**_

Cho Hakkai was not a man of many regrets.

The roads were slick with ice and rutted with slush where the snow had melted into dirt, thin cover for the frozen earth. The landscape was a gradated monochrome, trees and roads desolate and barren, black carrion left in the wake of the cascading snow.

Cho Hakkai —school teacher, housekeeper and driver. He was also a youkai. The darkness of his soul stared at him like a bottomless gaping gash, raw and black like the night sky of infinity.

In its cavernous depths lay chained a beast not unlike himself, manifested in his form and nourished with the same blood that flowed from his gut as it spilt out of torn flesh. It lurked within him nonetheless, stalking the echoing corridors of his banished thoughts, waiting for the moment where its vines like flowers would bloom and spread their poison.

Cho Hakkai was not a man who dwelt often on things that could have been. He understood those that had been, those that were, and those that would be. Those that could have been were sentenced to the murky quagmire of the past where no one delved and no soul lingered too long, where they wilted in absolute emptiness, fed only by themselves, supported by insubstantial fancies much like their own.

A teacher did not lament the intellect of a pupil whom he had already accepted. A house keeper, did not, after preparing dinner, open the fridge and look at the other ingredients, regretting his choice of recipe. A diver did not study the map and decide on the route, only to come to the conclusion halfway that perhaps the other path might have been easier.

They way of the world was as such.

A man did not enter a castle and slay a thousand youkai, bathing in their blood and rejoicing in their maddened cries, only to pause later and consider the consequences of his action.

When Cho Hakkai let his mind throw off the iron shackles under which he imprisoned its freedom, his thoughts flowed like water in a clear pebbled stream, winding and fluid—full of gentle what ifs that ran though the forgotten recesses of his mind.

He dreamt of a life that held no past yet was ripe with the promise of a future. He wished to be surrounded by books, inundated with the pleasure of holding the leather-bound volumes, devouring each page as a starving man ravishes a morsel of bread. Book on all subjects: literature, history, politics… books to rest upon his ebony shelves and fill the room with their heady scent.

Two functioning eyes, yes, he wanted those, brown orbs clear and bright as the spring rain. He wanted too to smoke, or drink, because he needed the form of release so readily available to Sanzo and Gojyo, a form of relaxation when his mind, tight as a spring, refused to unwind. He needed a vice.

More than anything else, he wanted company. It was a sort of selfish longing for unconditional love; not like the present because anytime now he knew the friendship would cut its course and reach its end, like the flame of a candle extinguished long before the wick had burnt short. He wanted eternity, wanted to hold time in his hand and grasp it like a smooth stone that rested snug in the contours of his palm.

There would be Sanzo, impeccable and grumpy as ever, face still ivory and hair still golden, and still the sun around which Goku's universe still revolved. Goku would remain the same, wide-eyed and unchangeably innocent, still a child in the face of a thousand deaths.

Gojyo was Gojyo, still brash and out-spoken as ever, a man who hid none and hid all, who lived for the day and drank for the next, a demon whose scars on the face bellied those in his heart.

Cho Hakkai dreamt of long white pristine corridors on which the sharp clip of mart boots rang, floors not stained by mud or earth, not scorched by the cinders of cigarette butts carelessly discarded.

He dreamt of another world where his eminent destruction seemed not as palpable as the ring of gunshots from beside and his continued survival was marked with each long swallow of bitter sake.

Cho Hakkai was not a dreamer. He could not afford to be, with the treacherous roads capped with sleet, a death trap for any unwary traveller A fatal slip and the jeep would plummet off the sheer edge of the jutted cliff.

Cho Hakkai was a planner, a strategist—logical and rationale.

Sometimes, just sometimes, when the snow hung before him like a wavering mist, translucent and delicate, shrouding the windscreen and pulling the tyres into its slippery depths, Cho Hakkai wished, just once, sending his prayer up to the gods, that he could be in heaven.

In heaven.

Away from all sorrow.

The End   
25/01/2005


End file.
